When the author, a Harvard-trained sociologist, left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street - the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence. This book reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. "Anyone interested in the study of disadvantaged neighborhoods should read this book, if only to understand the ways in which police influence the daily life in modern cities."---Andrew V. Papachristos, American Journal of Sociology